Dr. Thomas Louie, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Calgary, holds a container of stool pills in triple-coated gel capsules in his lab.

Written by

Elizabeth Weise
| USA Today

A "poop pill" may hold the key to healing an intractable infection that each year kills 14,000 Americans and sickens more than a half-million.

A Canadian team is testing the idea on patients with multiple infections of Clostridium difficile that did not respond to antibiotic treatments. The patients swallowed capsules containing fecal microbes from a family member.

So far only one of the patients in the ongoing trial had a recurrence, compared with an 80 percent rate in patients who have had multiple bouts of the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ...